Censorship: This is pretty funny — a friend writes that SonicWall’s ‘Content Filter’ has judged my home page and FOUND IT WANTING:
The URL http://jmason.org/ is currently rated as: category 4 - Pornography
w00t! It’s true, I have some pretty hot pics up there — the accuracy of their content filtering product amazes me!
Tags: category, censorship, content, filter, found, friend, home, page, sonicwall, url, wanting
Humour: Guardian Talk: The Barefoot Doctor, live online. This is the funniest thing I’ve read in months — thanks Tom!
(Background: ‘The Barefoot Doctor’ is the ‘healer’ who writes for The Observer Magazine on ‘wellbeing, alternative therapies and medicines and ways to cope with modern life’. Everything can apparently be healed through kidney massage and a few essential oils.)
Q: A case study, Mr Barefoot: my bus has crashed - I’ve got a compound fracture in my right leg, the bone is sticking out from under the skin and is wedged into the ‘Used Tickets’ receptacle, my skull has had a good old thump against the seat in front and is impersonating a boiled egg after the first thump with the teaspoon, and my ribs have been broken into bits like a packet of smokey bacon crisps someone has stood on.
What herbs and aromatic oils would you recommend?
Doc: you may jest - however, aromatic oils or potions can be extremely effective in speeding the healing process eg - manuka honey,lavender, marigold etc - thanks for bringing it up
Q: oooh good answer. yes i’m going out to buy some manuka honey right away. what do you do with it, is it nice on toast?
lavender, marigolds? is he opening a kitchen department?
Q: My unfortunate friend received a quite severe beating in the street a few days ago and has since been passing blood in his urine, in copius amounts.
Can recomend any effective massage oils for my friend? Its quite urgent because he’s beginning to talk incoherently about bright lights, can’t move and fainting.
Thank you, 3000
(… snip several hundred similar hilariously bitchy ‘questions’… Barefoot Doctor disappears for a while…)
Q: Where is he? Maybe the Barefoot Cab Driver who learnt to drive by karmic chanting has driven into a tree — or can’t find first gear?
(BTW the real ‘barefoot doctors’ were a different kettle of fish entirely; ‘part-peasant, part-doctor’ commune-level health workers in revolutionary China.)
Tags: doctor, friend, guardian, honey, humour, lavender, manuka, massage, talk, the, thump
Guardian Talk: The Barefoot Doctor, live online. This is the funniest thing I’ve read in months — thanks Tom!
(Background: ‘The Barefoot Doctor’ is the ‘healer’ who writes for The Observer Magazine on ‘wellbeing, alternative therapies and medicines and ways to cope with modern life’. Everything can apparently be healed through kidney massage and a few essential oils.)
Q: A case study, Mr Barefoot: my bus has crashed - I’ve got a compound fracture in my right leg, the bone is sticking out from under the skin and is wedged into the ‘Used Tickets’ receptacle, my skull has had a good old thump against the seat in front and is impersonating a boiled egg after the first thump with the teaspoon, and my ribs have been broken into bits like a packet of smokey bacon crisps someone has stood on.
What herbs and aromatic oils would you recommend?
Doc: you may jest - however, aromatic oils or potions can be extremely effective in speeding the healing process eg - manuka honey,lavender, marigold etc - thanks for bringing it up
Q: oooh good answer. yes i’m going out to buy some manuka honey right away. what do you do with it, is it nice on toast?
lavender, marigolds? is he opening a kitchen department?
Q: My unfortunate friend received a quite severe beating in the street a few days ago and has since been passing blood in his urine, in copius amounts.
Can recomend any effective massage oils for my friend? Its quite urgent because he’s beginning to talk incoherently about bright lights, can’t move and fainting.
Thank you, 3000
(… snip several hundred similar hilariously bitchy ‘questions’… Barefoot Doctor disappears for a while…)
Q: Where is he? Maybe the Barefoot Cab Driver who learnt to drive by karmic chanting has driven into a tree — or can’t find first gear?
(BTW the real ‘barefoot doctors’ were a different kettle of fish entirely; ‘part-peasant, part-doctor’ commune-level health workers in revolutionary China.)
Tags: doctor, friend, guardian, honey, lavender, manuka, massage, talk, the, thump
Wow — this guy won $250,000 on WWTBAM, and blogged it up, in excruciating detail. (His ‘Phone a friend’ friend also details his experiences, too). It sounds terrifying…
Hacking: Real-life UNIX disaster recovery.
Commuting: Guardian: A Life Inside meets commuter hell. The author of ‘A Life Inside’ is a convicted felon, undergoing a gradual release from prison; recently he’s been permitted to commute to a day job outside the big house.
‘I’ve had a good run, I suppose. More than a year of almost incident-free commuting.’ — until this episode, where one of those space invaders – the type who is perfectly happy to push you out of the way to make themselves comfortable — arrives…
I leaned farther away. Soon my back was hurting. Hang on a minute, I thought. I’ve paid the same as him for this seat. I was entitled to sit up straight. So I did. Back came the elbow. I wasn’t budging. And so battle commenced.
A glance at his computer revealed little activity. He was obviously too preoccupied with trying to make me budge. I was determined to resist this blatant act of aggression. I couldn’t help thinking it would never happen in prison - not without ensuing combat. I thought about my pal Toby Turner. This laptop lout was lucky he wasn’t sitting next to him in his heyday. I could just imagine Toby’s reaction to the elbow treatment.
Paying no heed to the mass of silent bystanders, my shaven-headed friend would have been on his feet in a flash. ‘Do you know how many fuckin’ anger management courses I’ve done?’
‘Er, no,’ his startled tormentor would stutter.
‘Six fuckers!’ Toby would yell, ‘and I still ain’t passed!’
Tags: detail, elbow, friend, guy, hacking, life, phone, prison, real-life, wwtbam
So it looks like Sarah Carey, a good friend of me mate Lean, has a blog, and it’s a great one too! Excellent. Added to the Irish blogroll on the right.
In other news, Simon Boyle got in touch to mention that the Saddam’s top tips for tourists interview in the Fermanagh-based Impartial Reporter was actually written by an contemporary of ours at TCD by the name of Maria Rolston. Apparently she’s good mates with my mate Wooder, too. Simon notes:
She’s the intrepid impartial reporter who wrote the story (and who’s had it reprinted minus attribution all over the world now). Oh the joys of being a first year reporter on a small local paper…
While we’re talking about small local papers, might as well note - tangentially - that Ireland’s local press has a long history of bizarre stories. One favourite, in particular, has gone down in journo legend (and Ulysses): the 19th-century editorial from The Skibbereen Eagle, which solemnly told Lord Palmerston that it had ‘got (its) eye both upon him and on the Emperor of Russia.’ Classic.
Tags: blog, blogroll, excellent, friend, interview, mate, news, reporter, saddam, touch
I quite like David Chess’ log — it boasts this quite good 419 piss-take:
FROM:PRNCSS. L ORGANA
DEAR friend.
I AM PRINCESS LEIA ORGANA ONLY SURVIVOR
OF THE ROYALFAMILY OF ALDERAN (ALDRN).
I AM MOVED TO WRITE YOU THIS LETTER,
THIS WAS IN CONFIDENCE CONSIDERING MY
PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCE AND SITUATION.
I WAS FALSLEY IMPRISONED UPON THE
IMPERIAL BATTLESTATION (”DEATH STAR”)
WHEN MY PLANET WAS HIDEOUSLY DESTROYED
AND ENDED BY THE BVERY BAD SITH LORD
VADER.
Thanks to Cam for the linky goodness.
Tags: dear, friend, from, leia, log, only, princess, prncss, survivor, this
Har de har! The perils of being used for demos. (or something).
Date: Sun, 06 May 2001 18:07:55 -0700
From: “Adam L. Beberg” (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: How to make lots of new friends..
Just have your AIM screenname on screen when a friend is interviewed for CNET, some instant messaging story or something, which is then played on CNBC and CNN… and…
*sigh*
http://www.iit.edu/~beberg/ (spam-protected)
Tags: aim, date, friend, har, may, screen, screenname, something, subject, sun
The weblog of Justin Mason; incoherent ramblings about Apache SpamAssassin, anti-spam, perl, software development, and the web, from an Irish software developer.
The opinions expressed on this web site are my personal opinions, and do not in any way represent those of my employer.
